Monthly Archive for May, 2007

: May, 2007

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke at the Seattle-based Technology Alliance’s annual luncheon today, answering questions from University of Washington computer-science professor Ed Lazowska and the audience. Ballmer talked a little bit about Microsoft’s strategic direction, but many of the questions focused on local and regional policy issues, particularly education. …

Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs appeared together on stage for an unusual joint interview tonight at the Wall Street Journal’s “D” conference down in California. Just to address the most pressing issue at the outset: Yes, they talked about Apple’s Mac/PC ads. But judging from the reports coming out of the session, it wasn’t exactly Hagler vs. Hearns. In fact, it sounds like the legendary rivals were, for the most part, pretty diplomatic. …

One staple of Microsoft Research’s annual TechFest event is the “surface computing” technology developed by Microsoft researcher Andy Wilson. At this year’s event, bloggers grilled the company’s research executives over the fact that Microsoft still hadn’t brought surface-computing technology to market. It turns out that Bill Gates was also getting a little impatient. …

Late last week, before the long holiday weekend, Novell filed its annual Form 10K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the first public copies of its controversial business and intellectual-property deals with Microsoft. So after months of waiting, now you can read the full text of the Microsoft-Novell Technical Collaboration Agreement, the Business Collaboration Agreement, and the Patent Cooperation Agreement. Actually, “full text” isn’t the right phrase. …

Nintendo of America has long owned a large and rare vacant property in Redmond, between its headquarters and Microsoft’s RedWest satellite campus. The company has been holding the land in reserve for potential expansion. But now, it appears that Microsoft wants to see the site become part of its own expansion plan. …

This may indicate strong demand for the color pink, or a lack of demand for the existing Zune colors, but whatever the cause, the “limited edition” pink Zune has become the second-best seller in the product lineup, Microsoft said today in its monthly update on its music device. The pink version, released earlier this month, is outselling white and brown, according to the company. That makes it second only to black. …

Following Microsoft’s $6 billion aQuantive acquisition, are more big deals a possibility for the company? Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president and chief advertising strategist, downplayed the possibility when asked that question this morning at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference. …

Microsoft is obviously larger than aQuantive, and the deal they struck last week was clearly a purchase by Microsoft, but Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Redmond company’s Online Services Group, described it in different terms during a JP Morgan technology conference this morning. From the Webcast: …

Bill Gates routinely makes public predictions, but he has been making even more of them than usual lately, at events including Microsoft’s Strategic Account Summit (transcript) and Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (transcript). So it seemed like an appropriate time to assess his past predictions. …

Under terms of today’s acquisition agreement, Microsoft will pay $66.50 for every aQuantive share. That’s an eye-popping 85 percent more than the stock’s closing price before the announcement. But it turns out that Microsoft wasn’t alone in pursuing aQuantive. The company has been stung in similar situations in the past, coming up short in bidding wars for high-profile acquisitions, and it no doubt wanted to avoid a repeat. …